


with shortness of breath (you explained the infinite)

by LostOnMyRoad



Category: Justice League - All Media Types, The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Consequences, Flash-Centric, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, barry messes with the speed force and there are, flash deserves more love as a character, i cherry pick from different canons what i want
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:54:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23220532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostOnMyRoad/pseuds/LostOnMyRoad
Summary: “Daydreaming, Flash?” someone asks. He turns to see Superman watching him intently. The man may be built like a Greek God, but he’s got an inside like marshmallows. He smiles, shaking his head. “Just thinking,” he grins. The shadow of the Speed-Force wavers in the corner of his vision. “Think we could convince Bats to get us an official Justice League minivan?”Superman sighs. “I suppose you’re calling shotgun?”Barry grins.Or,Barry struggles to come to terms with the fact that he’s going to effectively disappear while simultaneously trying not to let anyone know about said disappearance.(It starts, like it often does, with the dreams.Fire and heat, over and over again every night until Barry starts taking a bottle of sleeping pills before going to bed, in the hopes of staving off the visions for a few seconds, maybe a minute, when he’s sleeping.The Speedforce has always been rather volatile, but never like this.)
Relationships: Barry Allen & Justice League, Barry Allen & Leonard Snart
Comments: 10
Kudos: 91





	with shortness of breath (you explained the infinite)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in 2 days while blasting music, so please alert me to any grammar mistakes you find.
> 
> title comes from saturn, by Sleeping at Last

Barry hates fighting Luthor. Even more than he hates fighting Trickster, because at least Trickster has a sense of humor and some moral standards.

Luthor makes Zoom seem tame by comparison, sometimes.

This Luthor and Brainiac combination is easily the most annoying villain he’s ever met, probably because Luthor was already a smug shit, and adding Brainiac to the mix is doing him no favors.

But he was dangerous. And they couldn’t kill him, no matter how much they were aching to. So Barry gathers up the speed to rip them apart, and it feels strange, as if he’s going too fast. For the world’s fastest man alive, that’s a new feeling. He can feel the urgent whispers of the Speed-force, at first gentle then more demanding, pulsing in his chest, going _stop, stop, stop._

Either way, something clearly went wrong, because after defeating the Luthor-Brainiac match made in hell, Barry had just. Disappeared. There had been the sudden sensation of feeling like he was on a roller coaster, his stomach dropping out from underneath him, and then he’d woken up in the Speed-force.

The speed force, when it chooses to have a human form, almost always chooses to look like his mother. But its like her in appearance only. The red hair and fair skin, and her clothes too, like the cardigan she wore when she came to pick him up from school. When it talks through her voice, there’s none of her gentle warmth or hidden humor. Just a facsimile of his mother’s love.

He’s gone too fast this time, reached too far into the Speed force’s power. It had tried to warn him, but it was too late. He already feels different, no longer whole.

The Speed-force raises its arm and brushes a thumb against Barry’s cheek as he kneels there, in the void of time and space that it calls home.

 _“Oh Barry,”_ it says, using his mother’s voice. If he listens closely, there’s a slight distortion to her words, a hum of power that hints towards the fake body. _“You went too far, my champion. I cannot save you now.”_

It sounds almost regretful.

“What happens now?”

The speed force hums, clasping his hands. “ _I’m afraid you will disappear. It will be painful, champion. You will return your force to me.”_

His mother looks up, as if listening for something, her red curls bouncing. “ _Your friends are calling you back. I’m sorry your time was this short. At least, in a way, you will come back to me. You are my greatest champion.”_

It lets go, stepping back and giving him space to stand up again. He can hear it too now—the sound of someone calling him back. Barry takes one last look at the Speed-force, nodding once.

“Thank you,” he manages.

It nods, and the last thing he sees before he is very unceremoniously dumped back into reality is something that looks like regret in its eyes.

The first thing he notices when he peels himself off the bottom of the crater he’d made is the oddly strong connection to the Speed-force that he has now. He can hear its whisperings, feel it brushing against him.

The second is Hawkgirl leaning over him, and Batman standing a little further behind her.

“Thank god,” she says, before punching him in the arm. “Thought you disappeared for good.”

“What?” he manages, trying to play it off like a joke, even as his heart hammers in his chest. _You will disappear._

“Nah, I wouldn’t disappear like that. You still owe me lunch. I won that bet fair and square.”

Shayera snorts. “Back for half a minute and already talking about food.” She gives him a once over, and apparently he meets whatever invisible standards she has because she steps back and holds out her arm, pulling him to his feet.

“Bats, I’m using the zeta tube to get home. Make sure this one gets home in once piece.”

Shayera winks at him before curling one of her wings around him. “Don’t do that again without warning me,” she threatens, before taking off into the sky.

Batman will be a little harder to fool into thinking everything is alright.

“That ever happen before?” His voice is like gravel, no emotion whatsoever. The other League members had drifted further away once they’d realized he was alright, clapping him on the back with thinly veiled relief.

“No,” Barry answers, “and it shouldn’t happen again. Just went too fast.” He rushes through the words faster than usual, willing Batman to believe the lie.

Batman grunts like the literal caveman he is, before turning away with a swish of his cape. “Be careful.”

“Always,” Barry sighs, before speeding to the next zeta tube so he can go home and fall apart.

-

He sits on the couch in his bare apartment, looking at nothing in particular.

(If someone had walked in at that moment, he would have looked half gone already, eyes dead.)

His breath comes faster and faster until he feels something wet on his face and realizes he’s crying. Once’s he’s cried himself out, he no longer feels afraid. He’ll be strong now, and deal with it on his own. If he tells the League, they’ll try to find a solution which doesn’t exist. That’s not fair to anyone.

It’s strangely calming, knowing that he will disappear. There’s an air of finality. It’s a good thing he’s gotten so good at compartmentalizing over the years.

People have called him stubborn all his life. It’s time to put that tenacity to good use.

-

At first, he doesn’t even notice a difference, apart from the more insistent connection to the Speed-force, and he thinks it might have been wrong.

It starts, like it often does, with the dreams. 

Fire and heat, over and over again every night until Barry starts taking a bottle of sleeping pills before going to bed, in the hopes of staving off the visions for a few seconds, maybe a minute, when he’s sleeping. 

The Speedforce has always been rather volatile, but never like this. 

Then he notices his fingers phasing out sometimes, the very tips fading for a half-second and going numb.

It’s easy enough to hide, the suit covers his fingers. So, he continues acting like normal, and hides the fact that sometimes he can’t feel Shayera’s hand when she grabs it to fling him into the air, or Hal’s teasing elbow to his side.

-

Then comes the bone-deep weariness, where some days it takes all his strength just to get out of bed.

He starts spending the night hours at the Watchtower, when everyone’s gone home except for the heroes on night shift. The big windows allow for a spectacular view of Earth, bright green and deep blue and the wisps of clouds encircling it. No one ever comes by at night, too busy manning the stations or returning to the life of their alter-ego.

He presses his forehead to the cool glass and closes his eyes, tracing his finger in aimless patterns on the window. Trying to memorize Earth and where all his family lives, wondering what they’ll say when he just up and disappears one day.

Batman catches him one day, sitting on the ledge, head propped up on his knees, looking at Earth but seeing nothing, eyes empty. His mask is to his left, a crumpled mess of fire-resistant red material.

Bruce knocks on the metal side of the Watchtower, rousing Barry from his reverie.

“Something wrong?”

Barry curses internally. He’s not putting up a good enough front. His normally ever-present smile has been slipping, and if he tries to hard it looks rather manic. He’s been more quiet than normal, enough that Diana had sensed something was off and took him sparring, exhausting him until he can no longer think about what it will feel like to become one with the Speed-force. 

“You think too much, Bats,” he manages, voice pitched all wrong. When the pause in the conversation draws out he adds “I’m fine.”

Bruce levels a look at him, which he can almost feel through the cowl. When it becomes clear that neither of them is going to continue the conversation Bruce surprises him by sitting at one of the nearby tables. They just sit, watching the Earth turn for an hour, before Batman’s comm beeps and he walks away, leaving Barry feeling unsettled and like he’s missed something.

-

If he sits still for too long, then he can feel himself shaking apart, losing himself to the Speed force. It’s best to keep moving. He’s surprised by his luck on missions so far. His phasing in and out of existence, which has been getting worse (sometimes his whole hand will flicker for a second, and he won’t be able to feel warm for hours at a time).

Until of course, his sudden bout of good luck ends. It’s a League bust, and things are going fairly normally, except when his body goes cold and his feet suddenly feel like stone and one of the goons aims his gun at him.

The only reason he doesn’t end up a red smear on the wall is because Superman punches the living daylights out of the guy before he can pull the trigger, and Cyborg shoves him of the way.

Barry takes a shuddering breath, staring at the hole in the wall dripping liquid metal.

“Wow,” he manages, and Cyborg looks so unimpressed with him, as if wondering how he’s a founding member. “I’m glad that’s not me.” He doesn’t have it in him for a better joke.

Clark pulls him up and Barry does his best not to stumble with his numb feet and vision that’s blurring.

“I tripped,” he shrugs, when asked what happened. He highly doubts either of them believe him, but they don’t question him further, and they complete the mission without any further hiccups.

He crashes onto one of the couches in the rec room later, hand over his face to block out the bright lights. He hears people coming in, and sighs, because there goes his peace and quiet. However, the voices quiet down once they enter the room, meaning they’ve noticed him.

It’s Diana and Shazam, quietly conversing. One of them dims the lights of the room, and in between their conversation they hum the words to different tunes, which Barry finds odd. Their Ancient Greek washes over him like a soothing lullaby, and he falls asleep. In the depths of his sleep he hears someone whispering over him, and feels the ghost of someone’s hand on his cheek, but he can’t differentiate between dream and reality anymore. He wakes up in one of the man guest rooms and finds that it must have been Hal who dragged his ass in there. There’s a tiny bottle of vodka with a note that reads—more where this came from, meet me at our bar tomorrow at 9pm.

Barry chuckles to himself and pockets the small drink.

-

Hal is already tipsy by the time Barry arrives at the bar (late, of course, the infamous Allen super-tardiness hasn’t worn off).

Hal slides him a bottle and slurs out “It’s the kind you can get drunk off of. Had your friends at STAR labs give me a bottle.”

Barry laughs. “Remind me to thank them. This time I’ll try not to cause any property damage.”

They talk for hours, steadily getting closer and closer to blackout drunk until Barry feels sick, suddenly.

He manages to make it to the bathroom, dry heaving while Hal rubs his back, looking startingly sober in the dim bathroom lights, kneeling by him. His atoms don’t take kindly to him drinking anymore, which is one injustice too many.

-

There’s an old dockyard near the Rogue’s new hangout spot that he goes to visit. It’s got a nice view, no longer busy now that the shipping companies had started going to the newer one. The stars are out at night, along with the twinkling lights of Central City. He hopes that he won’t run into the Rogues tonight—the ache in his bones is making itself known, and his hands are shaking, when they aren’t phasing in and out of existence for little flickers of time.

He lowers himself down to the bench and watches the night sky. At some point, he loses himself to the rhythmic sound of the waves hitting the half wood half metal dock that stretches out a little into the expanse of the water, so much so that he doesn’t notice the other person that’s joined him on the bench.

He glances up to see who’s joined him and takes in a sharp intake of breath when he sees who it is.

Leonard Snart stares back at him, unimpressed.

“We got trouble, Flash?” His voice is gravelly, pitched low and wary. He’s rather territorial.

Barry allows himself a low chuckle. “No, Len. Didn’t think you’d be out here, in fact.”

Snart passes him a flask, and takes it, running a thumb over the worn metal, pleasantly surprised when his fingers don’t phase in and out of it. He probably shouldn’t, but he lets the alcohol burn as it goes down his throat. Almost immediately he regrets it, coughing and feeling his atoms do things they’re definitely not supposed to do. He slumps back against the bench, utterly spent.

Snart has frozen next to him (ha ha, frozen), eyebrow raised.

Barry doesn’t have the strength to put up a front anymore, and lets the smile fall of his face, head tilted back so he can see the stars. They remind him of the speed force in a way—distant yet glowing with an unmistakable power.

The whole charade is falling apart now, coming apart like rain-soaked letters.

Leonard shrugs off his parka and sets down his cold gun, glancing briefly for a moment at the stars, mirroring Barry, before muttering something that sounds unflattering.

“Going too fast, huh.” The bastard could always read him too well.

The sudden feeling of warmth envelops him, and Barry cracks his eyes open to see the fur lining of Cold’s parka, which has been draped across him. Huh. The warmth soothes some of the pain, and he dozes off, managing to slur out a thank you before going under.

When he wakes up, the first rays of dawn are peaking above the horizon, and he feels more well-rested than he has in weeks.

Snart is still sitting next to him on the bench, taking apart the cold gun and tinkering with its various pieces. He looks up when Barry shifts, rejoining the land of the living. He nods when the parka is handed back to him, and snorts when Barry whispers a quiet thanks.

“Don’t make a habit of it, Allen,” he growls, half- snarling.

Barry, already wondering if this is the last time he’ll see Snart, just gives him a small smile back, which clearly throws the Captain off.

“Bye, Len.” He pauses, trying to think of something to say. “Good luck” comes out instead of any of the things he wants to say, like _You could be so much more,_ or _I wish you tried to be better._

Barry walks out into the sunrise, heading back home. He can feel Snart’s eyes on him until he’s out of sight. 

**Author's Note:**

> as always a comment is lovely, and come bother me on tumblr! i have the same username :)


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